This cake decorating trend is more harmful than you think

One of the easiest – and prettiest – ways to take a cake to the next level is to adorn it with delicate edible flowers.

It’s one of the biggest trends in cake decorating right now, but you need to be careful before you DIY.

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Some of the most beautiful blooms, like hydrangea, lily-of-the-valley and ranuculus, are extremely toxic.

And even edible flowers can be dangerous, especially if you don’t know where they’ve come from.

Unlike fruit and vegetables, which have an exclusion period for pesticides before they are harvested, flowers from the florist aren’t grown for human consumption, unless they’ve been specifically sourced from an edible flower grower.

If edible flowers have been sprayed with insecticides, it’s possible that the icing could be contaminated.

"If you're planning to put fresh flowers on a cake, and they're going to make contact with frosting that's going to be consumed, those flowers also need to be organically grown and not treated with any pesticides," Susan Reid, Food Editor of King Arthur Flour'sSift Magazine told The Kitchn.

One of the easiest ways to get (safe) edible flowers is to grow them yourself. The following flowers are available in edible form at Flower Power.

Daisy

Chamomile

Dahlia

Dianthus

Lavender

Marigold

Nasturtium

Pansies

Snapdragon

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Viola

After some more ideas? Take a look at these cake recipes featuring edible flowers:

Rebecca Lowrey BoydRebecca Lowrey Boyd is a former magazine editor and the founder of Wee Birdy, one of The Sunday Times’ Top 50 Blogs in the World. A design nerd and bird enthusiast, she can usually be found poring over Pinterest, knee-deep in Bunnings or sticky-beaking at modernist homes in Sydney’s bushburbia.